


Everything is Blue

by MalMuses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, But he finally gets it, Castiel Lives (Supernatural), Castiel is Saved, Coda, Dean Winchester Uses Actual Words, Dean Winchester is Bad at Feelings, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Except Dean and Cas because they fell years ago, First Kiss, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Heaven is Falling, In Fact Everything is Falling, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Requited Love, Reunions, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Supportive Jack Kline, Supportive Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27449200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses
Summary: Castiel is in the Empty, leaving only his confessions and his handprint behind. To Dean, everything seems black.Until it's not.(A Season 15x18 coda/fix-it fic.)
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 372
Kudos: 2888
Collections: Destiel is Canon - 15x18 Codas, SPN Finale "Destiel is CANON" Collection, The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	Everything is Blue

**Author's Note:**

> I had zero intentions to write any codas this season...but I messed that up twice, first with my canon-divergent "Castiel takes the Mark of Cain" fic _[Hold On, Holy Ghost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22287952/chapters/53228665)_ and now with this. Oopsie.
> 
> Thanks to LanaSerra and Jscribbles. ILY!
> 
> A little angst for you...and then some hope, and some joy.
> 
> Take care of yourselves, readers. It's been a BIG week. Breathe. Recover. Enjoy.
> 
> \- Mal <3

Dry mouth, aching back, thighs concrete-numb. Dean can’t _swallow_ —it’s all he’d done, then, but now he’s parched and cracked and crippled by a pain between his ribs that hasn’t abated; not in all the time his phone bounced across the floor, vibrating, not in all the time since it fell silent. 

It’s only gotten worse.

He should call Sam. Vaguely, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that. But he can still feel Castiel’s hand on his shoulder, the ghost touch left bloodied on his clothes and scarred on his soul. 

Dean can’t swallow, he can barely breathe.

Something is rising up in him, twisting him, breaking him. 

Was this...was this in the book?

Was this a plan, a...a fate? To break him?

Or is this just Cas doing exactly what Chuck could never stop him from doing?

It was love, all along—Dean _knows_ that now, knows without a doubt that all the things he has done that he thought were completely unforgivable...they aren’t. 

Because Castiel, Angel of the Lord, forgave him. Hell, Cas had never seen him that reprehensible, broken way in the first place. It’s so clear now. 

Too late.

The cold of the bunker floor seeps through Dean’s dark jeans and chills his bones, setting an ache in them that, if he cared, he’d stretch to remove. Instead, he stays with his head in his hands, letting dry tears be washed away by new ones, gulping the stale dungeon air. One of his trusty brown boots is splayed forward now, crossing the outer line of the demon trap on the floor.

Dean stares at it dully, dusty toes and worn leather.

He’s not actually aware he’s still sobbing until he hears a voice beyond the door.

“Sam! They’re here! I can hear them—”

 _They._ Oh, God, _they._ Dean can’t, can’t deal with that right now. He squeezes his eyes shut and curls his shoulders forward.

Running feet thunder into the room, Sam shoving past Jack so fast that the kid’s smaller form bounces in the doorway. 

“Dean!”

Silence. Shaking breaths.

“Dean—Where’s Cas?”

As Sam approaches, Dean finally manages to swallow. It’s a cracking, creaking thing. Sam drops to one knee. Of course, his hand is reaching for Dean’s shoulder.

Dean flinches back, pulling his shoulder blade to the wall rather than have Sam touch—have him touch the—

It’s still _there,_ clear as day, a bright, mocking stain.

It’s all Dean has left.

A handprint, fresh oxygenated blood against the dull fabric of Dean’s shoulder, leaving a deep red mark that is as alien as it is familiar. Dean’s fingers grip tightly to the front of his own shirt, suspended in a moment where he can’t quite decide if he wants to rip it off and get it as far away from him as possible, or if he never, ever wants to take it off.

He settles on the latter and slowly lets his eyes drift back to Sam. Sam, who is frozen in understanding.

“Dean,” he says again after a moment, “what _happened?”_

“He’s gone,” Dean manages to get out past the lump in his throat that swallowing hasn’t cured. 

Sam’s hand reaches for his shoulder again—the other one this time, wisely—and Dean can feel large, blunt fingers digging into his muscle, shaking with grief and fear and anger.

Jack is silent.

“He’s gone, and he—” Dean’s voice is as rough and grating as unfinished rock, and his fingers curl into the stone of the floor as if expecting it to bend. “—he took Billie out with him.” 

Sam blinks hard, red-rimmed. “He took out Death? How? Where? What even—”

“No—no, I can’t.” Dean doesn’t mean to echo Sam’s earlier words back to him, but they come to mind and they’re all he has. “I can’t let myself go there right now, I’ll lose my mind.”

On Dean’s shoulder, still, Sam’s hand loosens with a shake, before coming back tighter.

Jack still hasn’t said a word.

Dean can’t bring himself to tell Sam what happened. He gets the feeling that Sam knows, at least a bit, as the hours and days go on. Hell, there’s cameras in the dungeon—maybe Sam did them both a favor and just went back to look. Or maybe he decides it doesn’t matter.

Either way, he doesn’t ask.

Sam doesn’t talk about Eileen. Dean doesn’t talk about Cas. Jack... Jack barely talks at all.

When they’d picked up Eileen’s phone from the pavement and realized that she was gone, Sam had switched off, barreled straight into leading, organizing, protecting the people they have left.

Dean retreats.

He’s angry—he’s so, so fucking angry. 

_“You are the most caring man on Earth. You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know.”_

It _stings_ , having that in his head. He’s angry at himself and he’s angry at the Empty and he’s angry at Billie—Fuck, he’s even angry at Cas, that dramatic fucking bastard. 

But he knows now where that anger comes from. Castiel blew the door right open and here he is, sitting with his pants around his ankles, caught. Exposed. He can’t even doubt that Castiel was right.

He is the way he is because he just loves so damn much. So much it makes him protective, vicious, determined. Afraid.

But it’s because he _loves_.

He loves Castiel, too.

Dean says it out loud now. He says it in the dark when he gets barely four hours of sleep, he says it to the bottom of his empty whiskey glass, he says it in the mirror when he stares at it, hoping for a glimpse of his angel, like in times long gone. 

It takes a few days to reach the point where he says it on his knees, hands clasped, cheeks wet. But he was always going to get there.

The world is reforming—they have a plan, they’re working, fighting.

“If there’s even a chance,” Sam says, “you _have_ to keep fighting, Dean, you hear me?”

Dean hears him just fine. But his body isn’t whole, his ribcage torn open in the bunker dungeon and put back just _not quite right,_ the smoking hole through his heart not healing. 

He fights.

He wears a stained shirt, and he fights.

Like Cas would have wanted.

***

Life never goes back to normal.

Oh, the fight against Chuck ends, sure. But there’s no “normal” anymore, is there?

Eileen, Charlie, Bobby, Donna...all gone. They don’t even have any bodies to bury, any ashes to spread. Just nothing.

Dean has spent his entire life struggling, fighting, locked in mortal combat with everything from Hell, to Heaven, to his own expendable soul. And this...this is what he has to show for it; nothing.

Yeah, the world is still here. That’s a reward in itself. Sam is still here. Even Jack. Dean tries to focus on them, on their success, but there’s a black maw of a hole that walks around beside him, haunting the negative space where an angel should be.

“Cas, I’m so sorry,” he prays, daily. “I don’t care if you can’t hear me... You were right. Sometimes it’s just about being it, saying it.”

Every morning—or sometimes after lunch, or in the middle of the night... Time is a bit sketchy—Dean wakes up and rolls out of bed, puts on a clean t-shirt, clean jeans, and then slips his stained shirt over the top. 

Sam hasn’t tried to make him take it off. But then, Dean hasn’t asked Sam about Eileen, either. He realizes that when he’s halfway to the kitchen with a takeout box in hand, going through the motions.

Jack is sitting at the head of the table in the war room, staring down at the Pacific Ocean. Sam is to his right, both of them—theoretically—doing research into Jack’s little angel-making thing that he’d had going for a while, trying to see if they can patch up the battered pieces of the world that they have left. 

Dean makes a U-turn with the pizza that remains in his hand. He lowers himself down to the seat opposite Sam, next to Jack, and slowly drags his tongue over his lower lip.

“I’m sorry.”

Sam looks up sharply, the way Dean’s words break the silence making them sound much louder than they actually are.

“I’m sorry about Eileen,” Dean says, rubbing his thumb nail over the corrugated edge of the pizza box. “I never said that. Never told you.”

Sam stills, like the air around him suddenly hardens, but then he nods, breaking the moment. “I never said it to you, either. About Cas. Just...seemed like we weren’t doing that.”

Dean hums as he nods slowly, only able to look at the mock-Italian label on the cardboard. “Couldn’t, really.”

Sam’s answering nod is understanding. Jack looks back and forth between the two of them, his bright blue eyes—Christ, Dean can hardly even _look_ at them—watering at the rims.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Sam asks. There’s no expectation in his tone. He’s almost as wrung out as Dean, even with his better coping mechanisms. “I thought about checking out the dungeon cameras but I, uh, I wanted you to tell me.”

“He made a deal with the Empty,” Dean blurts out. Beside him, Jack’s shoulders shudder like an invisible gun has just rebounded on him, and he sags, full of defeat.

“He told you, finally.”

Dean turns to Jack, a fat moment of silence sitting between them before he asks, “You knew?”

Jack barely opens his mouth before Dean butts back in.

“Of course—of course you knew. You had to have been there...when it happened.”

Nodding slowly, Jack turns his upper body to Dean, his words wholly for him. “Castiel asked me not to tell you. I wanted to, but...it was his decision.”

Sam clears his throat.

Dean fills him in.

“Oh,” Sam lets out, low, when the deal is revealed.

“Dean,” Jack murmurs softly when Dean takes a breath and tells them the rest. 

Word for word.

Because every word is etched into Dean’s memory, a speech of cursive scar tissue. He doesn’t realize that he’s crying—his body snapping back into shoulder-shaking sobs like they’d merely been on pause—until Sam is crushing him from behind his chair, one arm wrapping forward around Dean’s chest. 

Then Jack is there too, just as awkward as fucking ever, patting their backs in a big group hug like he doesn’t _quite_ know how this goes, but he’s seen it on TV. He’s so, so much like Cas.

Dean’s cheeks are wet but his heart finally feels a little less hollow. 

***

Sam brings Dean coffee the next morning. It’s well needed after a night drowning, soaking his misery in whatever he could find. He sets it on the nightstand, then lowers himself into the chair beside Dean’s little desk.

“He loved you,” Sam begins, clear and loud and entirely obscene for a time earlier than breakfast.

Dean cracks a little, hearing it out loud, but manages to swing his feet over the edge of the bed as he puffs out a long sigh. “Yeah.”

“Makes sense.”

Despite himself, Dean can’t do much beyond grunt in agreement. “Yeah, because I destroy everything I touch.”

“What?” Sam actually has the audacity to sound _puzzled._

Dean shakes his head, mouth open. “Seriously? This is _my fault_ , Sam! This whole thing—if it wasn’t for me, Cas would never have been in any of this mess. You can trace it back to any number of mistakes I’ve made, any number of—”

“Oh, fuck you, Dean,” Sam snaps viciously. His face, Dean realizes, is red and vivid. “Cas made his own choices. Even Chuck couldn’t control him. Have you learned _nothing,_ seriously?”

Dean’s mouth clacks shut.

“And in case you’ve forgotten, we _all_ lost Cas. He was my friend, too. And Jack—Jesus, Jack can barely talk.”

Dean’s knuckles start aching, alerting him to the fact he’s bruising half-moons into his palms. “I had years to say something, Sam.”

Deflated, Sam is silent.

“C-Cas—” Getting his name out is a challenge, but Dean forces it through his teeth. “—died. He died not ever knowing that he was loved. I never—”

“Dean,” Sam is softer, but still determined. “Maybe there’s—”

“Stop it, God—please, Sam, I fucking can’t. Cas thought... He thought so damn much of me, and I don’t deserve any of it.” 

Sam huffs angrily again, but Dean can’t care. He just wants to let his misery be.

“You owe it to Cas to be that person he thought you were,” Jack’s voice interrupts from the doorway. “He loved you so much, Dean. Don’t let him be wrong, be better than that.” 

“Jack,” Dean chokes out, broken all over again as Castiel’s words come flooding back to him. “I—I’m so sorry, I just—”

Jack only nods once, cutting through Dean’s words with a jut of his chin, before his eyes turn to Sam. “He’s here,” he says.

“Thanks, Jack,” Sam says, rubbing his huge palms over his thighs as the kid departs.

“Who?” Dean manages to ask.

“Drink your coffee,” Sam instructs—and Dean recognizes the mode that he’s slipping back into, leading, organizing, reminding himself there are still other things of worth.

Dean admires him.

“Michael’s here,” Sam continues. “He’s waiting.”

Sitting up straighter, Dean pushes his hands up over his face and breathes in a little more air. “Sure. Right. Yeah, I’ll—I’ll get dressed.”

The coffee glides down like tasteless tar, sweetened with a couple of Advil. Dean dresses. He reaches for the shirt, almost touching Castiel’s handprint as he rubs his thumb across the shoulder hem. 

He wrestles with himself for a moment, but ultimately, he puts it back on. 

Not ready yet.

Michael looks so jarringly young, closer to Jack than to Sam or Dean, and it always throws Dean a little. He knows what power is contained in that vessel—he’d been the sketchy joy ride of Michael’s AU version for months, of course—but even so, seeing _Adam,_ it’s hard to get his head around it sometimes.

“The fabric of the universe is coming apart,” Michael says in lieu of a greeting.

That makes him seem more like what he is, Dean has to admit.

Dean shrugs. “Sounds like a Tuesday.” 

Michael’s brow crinkles, and he turns to Sam instead, as if he’s searching for _some_ sense. “It’s just too much stress. The ripples of the bomb Jack let off, Death’s demise, the Shadow coming to Earth and ripping yet another angel from this plane; so many tears, no Chuck to fix them. This universe can’t take it.”

“What do we do?” Sam asks, already straighter with purpose.

“I suggest you let it happen,” Michael says, surprisingly soft. 

“What—why?”

“Because angels are appearing on Earth, materializing where they died. The Empty is disinte—”

Dean doesn’t hear any more.

_Angels._

_Where they died._

He knows that Michael is making some probably-fair point about gathering enough angels to shore up Heaven and start powering their world back up before it ends, telling them his plans, but Dean’s already running.

The bunker corridors echo with the frantic slapping of Dean’s boots as he hurtles around tiled corners, skidding in his haste to get to the dungeon.

“Cas!” he screams, slamming into the door with his shoulder, shoving it open with all of his weight. 

The metal door swings and rebounds off the wall of the empty room.

“Cas?” Dean asks more quietly, panting heavily as he moves inside, walking over to the center of the devil’s trap. He stops, shaking.

Nothing.

Dean is on his knees by the time there are voices in the open doorway, hushed and confused and concerned. There’s some explaining happening; Dean doesn’t care. The warmth that running had caused in his muscles drains away into the bunker floor, and with it trickles out the last dreg of hope that Dean didn’t even know he was holding on to; like sand through his fingers, he feels it slipping.

“No,” he murmurs under his breath before his head is bowed, the heels of his hands bruising into his eye sockets.

A hand presses to Dean’s shoulder and his whole body jerks, collapsing inward, crushed under his own weight. He is a black hole. “Sam,” he mutters, shaking his head as he looks up—

It’s Michael.

“Dean,” Michael says, far too calmly, “Castiel didn’t die here. He was taken to the Empty in this spot, but he wasn’t killed in this spot.”

Dean’s numb heart thumps painfully, just once, reminding him it can still break just a little more, if he wants. “What the hell’s the difference?” he bites out spitefully, shaking his shoulder from Michael’s hand as he stumbles to his feet.

“Castiel is not dead, that is the difference.” Michael is always so solemn that Dean doesn’t expect the depth of compassion in his eyes. “He is in the Empty, and I believe he is likely asleep or incapacitated in some other way, but he is not dead.”

“How d’you know that?” Dean croaks.

“He was dead before. It didn’t stick. So the Empty wouldn’t do that.”

Dean’s jaw aches; apparently he’s gritting his teeth. “So, you’re saying all these other asshole angels get to drop back down to Earth, every winged dick that strutted themselves onto the sharp edge of an angel blade gets sent back, and yet the Empty gets to keep _Cas?”_

“No, Dean. I just believe he will be the last. Not released until the Empty fails entirely.”

Dean’s heart thumps again, and it’s so painful he lets out a low gasp. He’s speechless, and truly horrified at the gibbering sob that falls from him as Michael reaches across, gripping Dean’s shoulder where it joins his neck. The pressure is firm and comforting.

“We’re going to need someone to find him, to bring him home, while the rest of the angels and myself work to close this world off from the Empty before we all go with it,” Michael intones heavily. He keeps his hand on Dean like he’s holding him up. Dean can’t feel his body anymore, so he might be. “The timing is very important. If we wait too long, we won’t be able to stop the fabric of Earth unraveling just like every other plane in this universe. But if we close it up too soon, Castiel may be stuck. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Dean blinks. Something in his chest is cracking—can anyone hear that but him? It’s like ice thawing. “Yeah, yeah,” Dean agrees hurriedly, nodding a little too fast as he shoves his hands across his cheeks, furiously pushing back the tears. “I’ll do it. Whatever you need.”

Michael’s smile is knowing. “Of course you will.”

***

Baby’s wheels crunch over the dried dirt path, spraying out small pieces of gravel to the sides as Dean curves her around to park. He lets out a long huff of breath and squeezes her steering wheel tight before he cuts the engine.

It’s a gamble, being here—he could be wrong, totally off base. 

“His body—because that’s not a vessel he has, not anymore—could re-materialize anywhere,” Michael had said, causing Dean’s stomach to sink. “But, the way these things tend to work is that when he’s thrown back to this plane, the very atoms of him will be drawn back to somewhere that resonates, somewhere with meaning.”

Dean had wondered if it would be the bunker, at first. But something about that felt wrong, and there was so much warding there, sigils that they still, after all these years, hadn’t even worked out... It seemed unlikely. 

“The barn, Dean,” Sam had said, soft and cautious and full of wonder. “Where you and Bobby met him that night.”

“You think the barn is that important?”

“He did this for you, Dean. All of it, always; it was for you,” Sam had reminded him gently.

So, here Dean is. The barn looks to be in even worse shape than it had been a decade ago, all broken boards and overgrown sides. It’s a dusty relic, but hell, it had been that when he and Bobby found it—pure luck, an abandoned spot that met their requirements, nothing more. 

Dean pulls the door open. The wooden locking bar is in two pieces—Castiel had broken it like it was nothing, he recalls. 

It’s like stepping back in time. The walls still bear all the warding that he and Bobby had so carefully sprayed on them. It was all useless, in the end, of course. They hadn’t even known what they were summoning was an angel; couldn’t have protected themselves from one even if they had known. It wasn’t until Castiel turned up that Dean’s whole world changed, the new view much bigger than he’d ever, ever expected.

He has no regrets.

Leaving footprints in the dust, Dean steps into the eerily familiar room. The bench along the wall still has a few abandoned candles and charms on it, all knocked over and jumbled about. Something crunches beneath Dean’s foot, and he looks down. Slowly crouching, he tilts his foot to the side and pulls the spent buckshot from between the treads of his boot.

Buckshot. From a shotgun shell.

Dean had fired that shot years before, with Bobby right by his side. It had glanced off Castiel like it was nothing. Dean’s fingers shake as he drops it back to the ground.

Deep breaths. 

When he reaches the center of the space, Dean digs his cell phone out from his back pocket and brushes his thumb across the screen, looking down briefly to unlock it.

“Dean,” Sam’s voice answers immediately. “You’re there?”

“Yeah, right here.”

“Okay. Michael just finished rounding up his brothers. They’re all glaring at each other, but they’re on board. He did some angel radio thing, said that everyone has instructions, knows the deal.”

“So what do I do now?” Dean asks, his throat thick. A familiar feeling.

“Just wait,” Sam says. “It’s all you can do. Michael’s pretty certain it won’t be long. Gabriel can feel it like Michael can—I assume Lucifer and Raphael can too, but I’m not sure they care as much.”

“Heh, yeah,” Dean agrees dully. “Okay.”

They hang on the line for a heavy moment.

“Sam, what if this isn’t—”

“It’s gotta be,” Sam soothes. “If it isn’t... We’ll work it out. We’ll find him. I promise.”

Dust motes dance on a shaft of bright morning light that is breaking incongruously through the wall. 

“Okay,” Dean says again, quieter. “I’ll call you the second he’s through.”

“Don’t waste time, Dean. Not even a second,” Sam cautions.

Dean rolls his eyes and hangs up. 

Hours pass—or maybe that’s just in Dean’s head.

He doesn’t move, except to shift his weight occasionally from nervous foot to nervous foot. The air is still, too still, and everything is quiet. Deathly quiet. Everything around Dean is holding its breath.

The sun shifts overhead and the shadows move. Dean blinks against the slowly growing gloom as the light hits elsewhere, raising his hand to rub the pads of his fingers across his eyes. 

The shadowy air in the middle of the room thickens.

Dean blinks again, but still, it’s there.

He can feel his heartbeat at the back of his tongue as he steps cautiously toward the _nothing_ that is slowly becoming _something_ in midair, snapping and contorting and bubbling in a horribly familiar way.

But...that’s it. There’s no trench coat, no sensible shoes. 

Dean is so tense he might snap, his bones pressing together and grinding under the pressure of his skin. Minutes tick on, and he can hear Michael’s somber tones in the back of his head cautioning him that timing is everything here…

Dean sticks his hand into the swirling, tar-like vortex. Grasps wildly, waving his hand around, until—

Fingers grasp his, and he pulls.

The sudden weight has Dean stumbling down to his knees, Castiel tumbling from midair and landing sprawled across his lap, his ribs to Dean’s thighs. Even as he rolls Castiel forcefully onto his back, Dean’s reaching for his phone.

The burbling hole that was once the Empty _keens_ hungrily.

Dean clamps an arm around Castiel, hauling him against his chest as the dial tone buzzes in his ear, barely heard above the screeching wind that seems to be whipping only within the barn.

Castiel’s eyes snap open like someone waking from a nightmare, wide and panicked. Then they lock onto Dean, and he sucks in a shuddering breath.

“Michael! Close it!” Dean screams into the speaker frantically. “Do it now!”

As Dean throws himself forward, curling over Castiel as if his weak, human body can somehow protect him, Dean’s phone gets flung to the side. For a few seconds the barn becomes a contained screaming hurricane, and all Dean can think about is the _noise_ and the way that Castiel grabs a hold of the fabric at Dean’s sides and desperately clings.

Then nothing.

There is a silence so absolute that Dean panics and expects to look around and see only blackness, like in the tales Jack and Castiel both told. The only darkness, though, is the inside of his own eyelids as he remains frozen, eyes squeezed shut as he holds Castiel.

“Dean,” Castiel croaks breathlessly.

Dean finally looks, and everything isn’t black.

Instead, everything is blue. 

It’s the blue of cornfields and the blue of skies and a million and one other sappy things that Dean doesn’t worry about, because to _him_ it’s the blue of a profound bond, the blue of a big win, the blue of “I love you.”

“Cas,” he pants out, realizing that he’s shaking—no, they’re both shaking. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Castiel answers roughly, his voice full of disbelief. “I’m—you—how? What happened?”

Dean hasn’t let Castiel go in the slightest, though he does pull back enough to study his face as he says, “World almost ended. Same old. It had to wait, though, because I’m done with this dying habit of yours.”

“You’re one to talk,” Castiel grumbles gently. His gaze flicks around though, filling with slowly dawning concern. “Dean—tell me you didn’t really risk that just for me, that you didn’t wait because—”

Dean shushes him with one finger. It’s light as a feather as he rests it on Castiel’s bottom lip, but Castiel hushes instantly, his eyes widening an impossible fraction more. 

“Of course I did,” Dean whispers, words easy. “Because I’m caring, remember? And selfless, and loving.”

Castiel’s face slackens and he blinks, his eyes dropping away as a flush Dean has never seen before from so close begins to spread up his cheeks. Dean knows what Castiel is experiencing, clear as day. The realization that he survived...that he lived. 

Lives, now, in a world where those words are out in the open, heard, and can’t be taken back.

“Dean,” he manages after a minute, blinking harder again, and Dean sees a shimmer around the reddening rims of his eyes. “I—”

Dean taps Castiel’s bottom lip again, though it’s more of a swipe this time, and his hand travels up across stubble to cup at Castiel’s cheek. “Hey,” he soothes gently. “It’s okay, Cas.”

The tears gathering in the wells of Castiel’s eyes tremble perilously. 

Dean presses their foreheads together. “I love you, too,” he whispers. “Not like a brother. Not like family, or like a best friend.”

Castiel lets out a small choked noise.

“I love you like you deserve to be loved.” The words are pouring out of Dean, and he can see them drowning Castiel below him, but he doesn’t stop, no matter how hard it is and how much he wants to. If he stops now, after all this, he’ll never be able to forgive himself. “I loved you hopelessly for the longest time. So long... Too long. But now, now I can love you endlessly, okay?”

A bright tear tracks down the side of Castiel’s nose and departs, dripping onto the inside of Dean’s arm as Castiel begins to nod—tiny motions at first, then faster, amazed, overwhelmed.

The next tear that joins Castiel’s is not his own, and Dean feels a surprisingly soft thumb brush beneath his eye, smoothing away another.

“Please say something, Cas,” Dean begs. “Don’t leave me hanging here, fuck.”

Castiel huffs out a laugh and rearranges his hands, cupping Dean’s face like it’s a precious thing, an idol Dean will never be worthy of being. 

“You are worthy,” Castiel breathes out, so close.

“Did I say that out loud?”

“Didn’t need to.” 

Dean ducks down the last inch, pressing their foreheads together again, bumping his nose along the side of Castiel’s, following his tear tracks down until he finds his lips. They press together shakily, just once, crossing the line with the softest brush. Dean pulls back, his eyes searching Castiel’s, checking.

Castiel surges back up, his eyes closing as his hands glide up Dean’s back to his hair, pulling them together. His palm slides right back over his own handprint, where it belongs.

On the floor, Dean’s phone rings, over and over, Sam’s name bouncing across the floor.

He’ll get it in a minute.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little coda. I don't know if I'll end up writing any more this season, with only two episodes to go, but I'll certainly be writing other things. If you'd like to be in the know about those, please [subscribe here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/profile) or follow me on social media: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MalMuses), [Tumblr](https://malmuses.tumblr.com/), and [Instagram.](https://www.instagram.com/mal_muses/?hl=en)
> 
> \- Mal <3


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